Out of her love for the great thinker Leibniz, Queen Charlotte commissions a portrait of him. During the portrait sessions, the philosopher and the young painter engage in a passionate struggle for truth in image and likeness, and ultimately for love and death.
Acting
Edgar Selge's Leibniz balances genius fragility with intellectual arrogance.
Cinematography
Every frame looks like it could hang in the Gemäldegalerie.
Writing
Dialogue that actually understands how philosophers seduce and destroy.
Director
Edgar Reitz
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Edgar Reitz spent four years developing this after his Heimat chronicles, calling it his 'anti-biopic' — no fake wigs, no explanatory flashbacks.
The lost portrait historically disappeared after Leibniz's death; Reitz imagines its creation as a philosophical erasure — the sitter consumed by the image he demanded.
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